


Cultural Contamination of the Daleks

by mary_pseud



Series: Damnatio Memoriae [15]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Don't copy to other sites, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-19 05:42:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19968970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mary_pseud/pseuds/mary_pseud
Summary: "Daleks. They were here, the greatest war weapon ever created – a weapon now without a war."





	Cultural Contamination of the Daleks

The aliens had come to Skaro, and conquered it. The Reflectionists had infiltrated and subverted and seduced Kaled society. Thal society as well, for that matter. Now the war was over, and the business of peace could begin.

The Reflectionists were aliens, beyond any doubt: alien thought-patterns projected into space and now reproducing in a series of identical cloned Kaled bodies. But while they expressed every interest in Kaled art, there were strangely reticent on revealing their own.

"There are so many things we could give you," they would say. "Art, literature, music and more. Caravaggio, Saki, Orbison, Grenouille…" But then they would smilingly shake their heads, and refuse to share any of it.

Too damaging, they would say. The Kaleds had been hammered nearly to dust by a thousand years of war: it would be unfair, grossly unfair and corrupting, to expose them to the art of other civilisations, when they barely had any of their own.

Instead the Reflectionists encouraged poets, egged on painters and were determined to get a memoir out of every soldier, young or old – or so it seemed.

There were some, though, who had no interest in art or music – but who wanted that forbidden knowledge, simply because it was forbidden.

Daleks. They were here, the greatest war weapon ever created – a weapon now without a war. Oh, the Kaleds might speak well of them, saying that their presence would forever be a warning to them of the long-term dangers of war.

But the Daleks only cared that something was being withheld from them. They were stubborn creatures, supremely focussed, and the discovery that a certain block of Reflectionist data was being stored in one of the Bunker computers temporarily was enough to drive them into action.

A Dalek had a rather peculiar breakdown in the main laboratory: machine-augmented aphasia left it gibbering nonsense, and nobody could communicate with it to find out what was wrong. All of the Bunker scientists gathered around it, and some Reflectionists did as well. They were working with and among the scientists, in the role of Laboratory Assistants, so it was natural that they would.

It was not natural that seven other Daleks, at precisely calculated places within the Bunker, would have simultaneous but different malfunctions, drawing every Reflectionist out of her place. As those eight Daleks were tested and probed and measured, a ninth popped open two unguarded doors, deciphered a fifty-digit pass code in less than a second, and entered a sealed computer space. It butted itself up against the computer it sought, its sensory spheres meeting with its terminal wires, and started to read.

It was not discovered until it had transferred nearly the entirety of the data into its own systems, with devastating effect. The first Reflectionist who found it was certain that it had also had a malfunction, but a quick scan of the computer showed otherwise: the Dalek had deliberately accessed the Reflectionist stored knowledge. More than that, it had gulped it down gluttonously, and was now suffering from the mental equivalent of indigestion.

Security had to be informed, even though the Dalek had been disarmed. Security Liaison came, and observed, and opened an audio channel to Commander Nyder.

"What is your evaluation?" he snapped. This sudden string of Dalek failures was irritating; that it had apparently all been a decoy, a trick, so that the Daleks could do some project of their own, was both infuriating and frightening.

"The Dalek unit is not fatally compromised," was Security Liaison's measured reply. "We have a dose of the amnesia drug ready, we are just calculating for its body mass. We are going to have to open its casing, though, to administer the drug and access its mechanical memory back-ups to be wiped as well. Is there a surgery clear?"

"Surgery Three is clear. How will you be getting it there?" The Dalek was quite capable of smashing through walls, and people as well.

"We are going to use an electronic block of its motive and sensory systems, then simply roll it into surgery. It should not be isolated for too long."

"Acceptable. Proceed." Security Liaison turned and scowled at the Dalek who was currently against the wall, staring into space, its sucker-arm jerking in irregular circles.

"I hope you realise what a waste of time this mischief is," she said, helping Memory Compiler Seven prepare the equipment that would isolate the Dalek in its casing, blind and deaf and speechless, until they could erase its memories of the last few hours. Otherwise it was sure to re-transmit what it had learned, and who knew what influence that might have on future Dalek artistic pursuits?

The Dalek paid no attention. Instead it sang to itself, a single nursery rhyme over and over and over again. It sang in a reedy voice, up until the moment they attached the cutouts and silenced it.

"I'm a little Dalek, short and stout. Here is my handle, here is my spout…"


End file.
